Endless war

The great Robert Fisk:

This was the year the "war on terror" - an obnoxious expression which we all parroted after 11 September 2001 - appeared to be almost as endless as George Bush once claimed it would be. And unsuccessful. For, after all the bombing of Afghanistan, the overthrow of the Taliban, the invasion of Iraq and its appallingly tragic aftermath, can anyone claim today that they feel safer than they did a year ago?
We have gone on smashing away at the human rights we trumpeted at the Russians - and the Arabs - during the Cold War. We have perhaps fatally weakened all those provisions that were written into our treaties and conventions in the aftermath of the Second World War to make the world a safer place. And we claim we are winning.

Let's hope 2006 is a better year.

Funny

The LATimes makes us laugh.

Boom!

Expect an avalanche of this:

The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners will not identify the money's origins.

Levon on "Nightine."

Congrats

Leslee Wright finally found a good hair stylist. She looks great.

Failing to get it

Paul Eells (without a hint of emotiton):

"That's string music."

After a made free throw. Three things: A) "String music" must be growled enthusiastically, Joe Dean-style, B) it should be a three-pointer and C) Joe Dean must be acknowledged when using his trademark phrase.

Halftime: UA 19, UTPA 12

Rick Schaeffer:

"We haven't seen a game like this since the introduction of the shot clock."

The Razorbacks can really play down to the level of the competition.

Wait till next year

Here. Monday's the federal holiday.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff consulted briefly Friday with a federal judge in Miami as they put the finishing touches on a plea deal that could be announced as early as Tuesday, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
The plea agreement would secure the lobbyist's testimony against several members of Congress who received favors from him or his clients.

Expect the details to leak before then, actually. Happy New Year.

It relents

A couple of weeks ago, we started getting increasing amounts of spam daily. At first it was a few a day -- dick pills, software, porn, counterfeit watches. By yesterday, the volume had grown to about 50 in one day, almost all going into the bulk file. Today? Zero.

Where will it end?

Dana Priest:

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

All here. They're completely out of control. And the GOP Congress can't be expected to exercise any oversight. W will say he's protecting us from "the evil ones." Who's protecting us from him?

Bass ackwards

Who ratted us out?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.

There are consequences for revealing W's criminal activity.

Maybe you missed it

An interesting New York Times op-ed on underreported stories of the year. And because they get up earlier than we do, we'll just lift the Arkansas Times' link to Krugman's year-ender.

She should sue her parents

And her friends:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- When college freshman Janet Lee packed her bags for a Christmas trip home two years ago, her luggage contained three condoms filled with flour - devices that she and some friends made as a joke.
Philadelphia International Airport screeners found the condoms, and their initial tests showed they contained drugs. The Bryn Mawr College student was arrested on drug trafficking charges and jailed. Three weeks later, she was released after a lab test backed her story, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday.
Lee filed a federal lawsuit last week against city police, seeking damages for pain and suffering, financial loss, and emotional distress. She was arrested on Dec. 21, 2003, and was held on $500,000 bail and faced up to 20 years in prison had she been convicted of the drug charges.

Too bad they couldn't prosecute her for criminal stupidity. Now the entire country knows she's a moron.

Best and worst of 2005

The Arkansas Times' annual list, by Bob Lancaster.

Horror show

Never heard of this actually happening:

LOVELAND, Colo. (AP) -- A man trimming trees was killed after he apparently was pulled into a wood chipper, police said.

Who to tour in 2006

Says Pete Townshend. All shows to be Webcast, he hopes.

Bum wrap

From the Beeb:

Researchers at a Scottish university are aiming to answer the question - does my bum look big in this?
Heriot-Watt University's School of Textiles and Design has launched what is believed to be the world's first study on how clothing affects the bum.
Four female models with various sized bottoms will wear different types of clothing as part of the research.
The study will examine how designs, colours, patterns and fabric types affect perception.

Includes gratuitous J-Lo photo.

Party poop

Bummer:

Washington County’s ongoing burn ban will also mean a ban on First Night fireworks.

We're -15" on rain for 2005.

Iraq civil war preview

Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder reports that the Iraqi army units in the north are mostly Peshmerga, loyal to Kurdistan. They, and their Arab counterparts, foresee a civil war for autonomy. With a sidebar on the history of Kurd-Arab animosity. Not exactly the outcome the neocons expected from their excellent adventure to remake the Middle East. And now they have to figure out how this was all Clinton's fault.

It's Wednesday

Gene Lyons:

What we’re witnessing is the mainstreaming of paranoid persecution fantasies that used to be the provenance of fringe outfits like the John Birch Society and the Klan.

(No Conason today.)

W gives FISA court the finger

Seattle P-I:

WASHINGTON -- Government records show that the administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval.
A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined.
The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court nearly four years ago to launch secret National Security Agency spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an acknowledged authority on the supersecret NSA, which intercepts telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and Internet communications.
"They wanted to expand the number of people they were eavesdropping on, and they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from the court to monitor those people," said Bamford, author of "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" and "The Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization." "The FISA court has shown its displeasure by tinkering with these applications by the Bush administration."

All here. Reuters has essentially the same story sans Bamford. So when the court wouldn't rubber-stamp requests for wholesale eavesdropping, the White House just said, "Fuck you, we won't bother to ask from now on." They intentionally violated the law, and arrogantly proclaim that they'll continue doing so. There are no constraints on these crooks.
Hat tip to mikevotes.

Wolcott reads warbloggers

They live in a fantasy world where the people they hate chop the heads off the other people they hate for them. We pity these people. What a miserable existence.

Kippies

The auditors have announced the winners, and none of our candidates won -- except O'Reilly, in a landslide.

Jenny Craig

Every time that new commercial with the song "It's Raining Men" comes on, it reminds us of 9/11.

The road not taken -- until now

James Carroll:

AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE was proving itself inadequate to the challenge. The president appointed a special commission to make recommendations. The year was 1954. The commission chairman was James Doolittle, the retired bomber general who had led the first air raid against Tokyo.
''It is now clear," he stated in his report to President Eisenhower, ''that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, longstanding concepts of 'fair play' must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counter-espionage services, and must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may be necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand, and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy."
Sound familiar?

Read it all.

WaPo Xmas quiz

Here. Sample:

Q: True or false: The abbreviation Xmas is irreligious.
A: False. This was originally an ecclesiastical abbreviation, derived from the Greek letter "chi," the first letter in the word Christ, used in tables and charts in the early days of printing.

ENJOY

Bamford on NSA

The author of two books on the spy agency weighs in on its history and the ramifications of the illegal eavesdropping in The New York Times Week in Review.

'McLaughlin Group'

Last night they did one of two year-enders. In the category Best Comeback, Pat Buchanan named Ahmed Chalabi, who went from suspected Iranian spy to being welcomed at the White House, and Larry O'Donnell agreed. We wondered when they taped it, because:

The politician and onetime administration and U.S. newspaper source, Ahmed Chalabi, "appears to have suffered a humiliating defeat at the recent Iraq polls," NBC News reports today, according to the uncertified preliminary results. It said that preliminary results in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad indicate that Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress scored a minuscule 0.36 percent of the votes. In the Shiite city of Basra, the results indicate Chalabi, the current deputy prime minister who some neocons thought might soon head the country, had an equally dismal showing of 0.34 percent of the vote. In the Sunni province of Anbar, 113 people voted for him.

If Chalabi's as shrewd as reputed, he'll leave Iraq before the new government stuffs him back in the trunk of a car and extradites his ass to Jordan to serve his bank fraud sentence.

Don't blog everything you hear

It was a hoax:

NEW BEDFORD -- The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.

We were skeptical. via DailyKos.

1984

Danger:

The attorney general should be immune from lawsuits for ordering wiretaps of Americans without permission from a court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote in a memorandum in 1984 as a government lawyer in the Reagan administration.

This may be why they nominated him.

1984+21

Everything:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.
As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

You have no privacy.

Challenge (partly) accepted

Since Greyhair asked. We think this is what bloggers call a meme:

Seven things to do before we die:
1) Take out the trash.
2) Get a job.
3) Get car repaired (blown fuse).
4) Get a new driver's license.
5) Renew car tags.
6) Buy that land.
7) Build that house.

Seven things we can't (or won't) do:
1) Play any musical instrument.
2) Quit smoking.
3) Quit drinking.
4) Speak Arabic.
5) Clean house.
6) Climb a pole.
7) Outrun a cop.

Seven things that attract us to blogging:
1) It's free.
2) We're news junkies anyway, therefore:
3) We spend lots o' time surfing the Web.
4) We're angry.
5) It's (sort of) anonymous.
6) We like to ridicule people.
7) Everybody else is doing it.

Seven things we say most often:
1) Hey.
2) What's happening.
3) Go Hogs.
4) Two cartons of Marlboro reds in the box, please.
5) One more St. Pauli Girl, please.
6) Thank you.
7) Tab, please.

Seven books we love:
1) The AP Stylebook.
2) Webster's New World Dictionary.
3) Bartlett's.
4) Elements of Style.
5) "The Exorcist."
6) "The Metamorphosis."
7) "David and the Phoenix."

Seven movies we watch over and over:
The word is repeatedly, and our attention span is too short to watch movies.

Seven people we want to join in too:
Everyone who reads this blog.

Townes Van Zandt

Even when you're bored with everything political, if you look around long enough, you can find something blogworthy. And so we found, in Editor & Publisher of all places, that there is a new documentary about Townes, titled "Be Here to Love Me." DVD due in March. Greg Mitchell tells about how it got made. NYTimes review.

'Deal or No Deal'

The best thing about this dumb show is when the babes come marching over the riser with the briefcases. We initially thought it could've been better with a less-annoying host, but we're starting to think Howie Mandel may have found his calling. And still, it's fun to watch, and looks like it would be fun to play. Alas, we get the impression that you have to get all theatrical to be a contestant. We'd demand a recliner.
Re: Miss Wilkerson, we had a crone for our first-grade teacher. Had we been in Miss Wilkerson's class, we would undoubtedly have been sucked, as through a wormhole, into premature puberty.

Murder-suicide

He always "turn[s] the gun on himself." (Correct us if there's any evidence that women do this shit.)

No lunch for you

If you work for Wal-Mart:

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- A California jury on Thursday awarded $172 million to thousands of employees at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks.
The world's largest retailer was ordered to pay $57 million in general damages and $115 million in punitive damages to about 116,000 current and former California employees for violating a 2001 state law that requires employers to give 30-minute, unpaid lunch breaks to employees who work at least six hours.

What happened to terror alerts?

Josh, responding to a reader's question, notices there hasn't been one since Election Day 2004. We'll hazard that they'll resume if Congress gets too uppity next year about warrantless eavesdropping.

BBC Magazine's Quiz of the year

It said 52 days 52 questions. It was in four parts. Each part had 12 questions.

Shoulda nominated Luttig to SCOTUS

He blisters 'em:

A U.S. appeals court, acting in the case of alleged "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, today rejected the administration's move to avoid another Supreme Court review of its powers of detention, blasting the government in unusually blunt terms for its behavior in the case which, it said, may have significantly damaged "its credibility before the courts."
The decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond stems from the administration's actions last month just as the Supreme Court was set to consider whether to review the Padilla case.
At that time, after holding him without charges for three-and-a-half years, it indicted Padilla on criminal charges and asked the 4th Circuit to have him moved from a military prison to a civilian prison, thus mooting the issues the Supreme Court might have reviewed on the question of detention without formal charge. On top of that, the government asked the appeals court to withdraw the opinion it issued that might have been considered by the justices, even though that opinion upheld the administration's position on detention.
Today, the panel rejected both requests in an opinion written by J. Michael Luttig, a conservative often mentioned on the administration's short list for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Maybe the courts are deciding that rubber-stamping anything these megalomaniacs want to do isn't such a good idea. We've been skeptical about how good a case the feds have against Padilla since Ashcroft held that news conference in Russia to announce his arrest. We don't doubt that he had bad intentions. But to imprison a U.S. citizen for three-plus years, they ought to be required to produce some proof. Apparently they can't even trump some up.

Shorter Gene Lyons, Joe Conason

IOKIYAR.
Will he force us to impeach him?

Lips loosening

Looking forward to 2006:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say.
Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a "unique resource."
Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.

He'll probably need the Witness Protection Program. One guy's already dead in this mess.

They're listening to everything

NYT:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.

These guys are a bottomless void.

The difference between a federal judge and God

God doesn't think he's a federal judge. This one doesn't think W's God.

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John D. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.
Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.

"Legally questionable" is a euphemism for illegal.

Wow

Can't say we've ever read Obsidian Wings, although we've heard of it. Too bad, if this is representative. Instant every day.

Lifestyles of the corrupt and infamous

Must have been nice:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As Tom DeLay became a king of campaign fund-raising, he lived like one too. He visited cliff-top Caribbean resorts, golf courses designed by PGA champions and four-star restaurants - all courtesy of donors who bankrolled his political money empire.
Over the past six years, the former House majority leader and his associates have visited places of luxury most Americans have never seen, often getting there aboard corporate jets arranged by lobbyists and other special interests.
Public documents reviewed by The Associated Press tell the story: at least 48 visits to golf clubs and resorts with lush fairways; 100 flights aboard company planes; 200 stays at hotels, many world-class; and 500 meals at restaurants, some averaging nearly $200 for a dinner for two.
Instead of his personal expense, the meals and trips for DeLay and his associates were paid with donations collected by the campaign committees, political action committees and children's charity the Texas Republican created during his rise to the top of Congress.

It's gonna be tough to adjust to life in a Texas prison.

Yep

The NYTimes had the NSA spying story before the election, the LATimes reports. Thanks for holding it, guys.

Intelligent decision

Predictably:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- "Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.
Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said. Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives, he said.
... Said the judge: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

See Commandment No. nine.

Recovered memories

Leno was cracking wise about Pam Anderson's pole dance being cut from Elton's special the other night, and it reminded us of when, in 1978, Cher hostessed a TV special with guests Dolly Parton, Rod Stewart and The Tubes. And Fee Waybill sang "Mondo Bondage" while Cher did a pole dance dressed in black leather (or maybe latex) -- prime time. Bozo probably had an aneurysm.

Busted

Jon Alter:

[B]ush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law.

Robert Parry dismantles the speech

Read it.

Fact-checking Bush's TV speech

Doyle McManus of the LATimes finds him selectively quoting from a poll.

Vinnie "The Chin" dies

What a character:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Mob boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, the powerful Mafioso who avoided jail for decades by wandering the streets in a ratty bathrobe and slippers, feigning mental illness, died Monday in prison. He was 77.
The head of the Genovese crime family, who had suffered from heart disease, died at the federal prison in Springfield, Mo., said prison spokesman Al Quintero.

Dunno about that "Vincent" part. "The Chin" reportedly didn't have anything to do with his face; it was short for Vinchenzo.
CORRECTION: Make that Vicente.

It's a good thing we don't torture

Because it means that the people in this New York Times story have clearly made up remarkably similar tales of their imprisonment in Afghanistan.

Lie detector

Pegged out.